


Writing Forcefully

by Riels_shorts



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Crack, Fall of Ben Solo, Gen, Luke Skywalker Romance Novelist, Minor Character Death, Poet Ben Solo, Terrible poetry, jedi academy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-09-01 15:04:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 17,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20260051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riels_shorts/pseuds/Riels_shorts
Summary: “It's Jedi transcriptions,” he tells his nephew, “Ancient knowledge gathered painstakingly over the last nine years. It's not—whatever you just called it.‘Erotica.’”Luke shoots Ben a glare through his eyebrows and infuses it with as much teacherly disdain as he can muster.The tall, gangly teen remains motionless, holding his uncle's gaze.“It'snot.”Luke crosses his arms.-----In which Luke writes Perfectly Respectable Fiction and Ben writes terrible emo poetry.Be warned, it ends badly.(Moodboard byslipgoingunder)





	1. Chapter One

“It's Jedi transcriptions,” he tells his nephew, “Ancient knowledge gathered painstakingly over the last nine years. It's not—whatever you just called it. _‘Erotica_‘.’” Luke shoots Ben a glare through his eyebrows and infuses it with as much teacherly disdain as he can muster.

The tall, gangly teen remains motionless, holding his uncle's gaze.

“It's _not.”_Luke crosses his arms.

Ben faintly raises one eyebrow. Rolls his eyes, and with a huff exits the thatched hut.

Luke holds the glare on his nephew's retreating form until he is out of view and then exhales, the rough cloth of his robe sagging as his shoulders relax. He waves his hand at the door, shutting it against the warm summer breeze, muttering about princes being raised in barns.

He resumes his composition.

“_“No!” shouted the robed figure enshrouded in mystical-looking mist_.

_The golden-haired Jedi’s sculpted muscles glinted with the steely glow of the lightsaber as he held it aloft and his sleeves fell to reveal his elbows. Then also his biceps. _

_The beast looked momentarily stunned._

_“That’s far enough, monster,” he asserted, staring down its twelve beady, yet fathomless, sensory orbs with his own steely gaze. “I stand between you and this village, and I will never allow—”_

“Master Skywalker?” A knock sounds on his door.

He throws his head backward, eyes toward the ceiling, and puts down his pen.

“Yes?”

“Master, there's a… a situation.”

A green-tinted head with nervous, large eyes pokes into the hut. "The students sparring just set the practice field on fire and uh, it's burning pretty quickly. Um.”

Luke pauses. Raises an eyebrow. “And?”

“And, sir? Wh-what should we do?”

“Well, put it out? Obviously.”

The student forms a sort of little ‘O’ with his mouth and dashes back out. The door slams shut so hard that it bounces open. Luke closes it with a wave of his hand. Gently.

_The monster flailed its tentacles, roaring a wet, beastly, thunderous and slappy challenge. It bit off a Makaki tree branch and swung it, lassoing it in a circle over its misshapen head._

_The Jedi knight, unafraid, centered in the Force and full of the glow of youth, stepped boldly forward and reached out to the Force for its wellspring of power. It felt really great. He also felt the creature's life essence and the ferocious Dark energy flowing through its being. _

_A muscle on Duke's hand twitched with effort as he extended his fingers toward it._

__

__

_The Gargwaugh beast snarled at the intrusion into its mind, felt the calming and gentle pressure to quieten and—_

__

__

“Master? Master Skywalker?”

“WHAT!?”

The student, wincing, steps back at the volume of his master's voice.

Luke coughs. More quietly he adds, “Yes, Bleelo? What is it?” For good measure, he tries using the opportunity to practice his 'disarmingly charming older gentleman' impersonation of old Kenobi, the one he's been polishing since reading the latest holo copy of 'Make Friends and Manipulate People' that Leia sent him last month. He curls the corners of his mouth up in a harmless smile and raises his eyebrows as far up his forehead as he can manage. Unfortunately, neither gesture comes across as genuine or disarming and the whole effect is, in fact, slightly frightening. His teeth jut crookedly out.

Bleelo takes pause, absorbing this development. He seems to reach a decision to go ahead with things and states, “There's a situation, Master.”

Luke rubs his hand over his mouth and chin, leans on his elbow and then mumbles through his fingers. Rubs his mouth again. His eyes close.

Sounds escape through his fingers.

"Pardon, Master Luke?"

“I said, 'What is the situation, Bleelo?’"

“Oh, Master! It's terrible! Rukas and Sefinne. They're… _kissing again_ and it's disgusting and there's lekku everywhere and—”

“Okay, stop.”

“It's… it's bothering the _children_, Master.”

Luke digests this_. The ‘children’, _he thinks,_ who are one and a half months younger than you, Bleelo, and who are probably delighted with the situation because it means they can now sneak into the library and throw holocrons at each other because no one is watching them. Naturally they would be absolutely aghast at this lack of oversight_.

“How inconsiderate,” Luke says aloud. “Please inform the lovebirds that if they don't cease amorous displays immediately they will be kitchen scrubs for the next two days.”

“But they'll probably—”

“Separately.”

“Oh. Yeah. That'll work in that case.”

“Thank you, Bleelo.”

Luke waits for him to depart. Instead he stands there, mute.

After a moment Luke hedges. "Dismissed.”

Bleelo startles and straightens.

“Oh! Of course. Yes. Thank you, Master.” He departs with enthusiasm.

Luke cracks his knuckles.

What was happening… ah, yes.

“_It is time to rest, now,” Duke crooned at the beast. “Sleep, rest, that’s it.” _

_The Gargwaugh’s leathery jowls and rough folds of skin quivered and quieted under the gentle caress of the Jedi’s hands._

_Then, suddenly—from out of a dark cave, thirty paces behind the creature and slightly to the left, a feral shriek echoed through the jungle. _

_A lightsaber—red like the Tatooine sunset after a sandstorm—danced in the shadows, twirling, sizzling, detonating everything in its path. It sent sparks buzzing and shadows flickering in a maddening kaleidoscope. The leaves caught fire, leaving little pricks of light through the trees like a Hosnian dinner garden party._

_In spite of his amazing Jedi reflexes, Duke was too stunned to react in time._

__

__

_The battle cry shook the beast out of its trance and set it to savagely thrashing against the trees, snagging one of its eight legs in the vines._

_The red saber sang viciously as it landed against the beast. It lunged—_

__

__

_—At a woman._

_He knew this woman._

_His nemesis._

__

__

_His rival._

__

__

_She was dressed all in black leather and high heels. Wow, and there was even some cleavage. It was rapidly doing some uncomfortable things to him._

_“Lara—” he started, entranced, struck dumb by her ferocious appearance and then by a swinging tentacle. _

_A moment later, the beast was dead. A hissing sound rose from the corpse, followed by a pungent smell. He stopped rubbing his head and covered up his nose instead when the burnt odor reached him._

_“Ow!” He muttered, not whiny about being hit by a tentacle and also not complaining about the smell._

_“Oh, Duke,” she purred, lowering her lightsaber. “It's been awhile. How are the Jedi faring these days, darling?"_

_She licked her lips._

_He stared at her. _

_"Duke?" she said after a moment. "Base to Gold Leader? Are you actually all right?"_

_No, he wasn't. He was in serious trouble._

"I—"

“Master Skywalker!"

The door bursts open, blowing in a cloud of dust and petals and several gnats, who promptly and happily settle into the space surrounding Luke's head. They circle contentedly as the latest student, Svenn, announces with gestures and, Luke notes, an _utter _failure to observe proper protocols of respect, that some kind of new emergency is going on.

“Master, there's—”

"Stop. Don't _any_ of you knock? I could be relieving myself in here and you'd get an eyeful—"

"But Master, the latrine is that hut over there—"

"That is irrelevant to the point I am making here which is that a _respectful Jedi student_ is someone who shows _respect_ toward their teacher by _not disrespectfully knocking down doors and waving miscellaneous limbs about in the middle of the_—what?"

"Well it's just that," the student hesitates as Luke swats a fourth gnat irritably, "there's a situ—"

“If you say _‘a situation,’_ I am going to give you latrine cleanup duty for the rest of the day, Svenn!”

“There's,” the Chiss scrunches up his face in concentration, “an issue.”

Luke closes his eyes. Opens them.

“Yes?”

“Yes. An issue.”

_“What is the issue, Svenn?” _

“Ah, uh, yes, it is that—well, they put the fire out."

"Okay, great. Thank you for telling me. Dismissed."

"No, but now the water cistern is in pieces."

Luke stares at him. His mouth moves a few times, contorting but making no sound.

"But why?" The question finally escapes his lips in an audible way.

“Well, they sliced open the bottom of it, sir, and then half the tank caved in and now all the water rushed out. It's all gone. What are we going to drink? That was everything we had, unless it rains."

Luke pinches the bridge of his nose.

That _would _explain the smoke and the pungent smell that had subconsciously made their way into his story, come to think of it.

_“Ah._ And, uh, whose bright idea was it to do that? Wait. No, don't tell me. Let me guess.”

“It was Ben's, Master Luke.”

“Of course it was.” Luke sighs, shuts his book, and leans back on his rough-hewn, low-backed stool. He sets his pen down neatly beside the flimsiplast drawings of what might possibly be immodestly-clothed Sith ladies but which are certainly not because he is a dignified ascetic, damnit.

"Thank you, Svenn." Luke dismisses the student with a tilt of his chin.

He stands. He calls for his ceremonial cloak, the one he uses when he wants to intimidate the students, and it flies to his hand from its wall hook. Flinging it over his head, he marches out and slams the door shut with enough force that it bounces back open.

The gnats, nonplussed, follow.


	2. Chapter Two

The scene that meets him is chaotic.

There is shouting in the distance. The Jedi master, bedecked in the most imperious clothing academia can offer, strides toward the sparring field near the half-constructed new Jedi Temple where he can already see wisps of smoke rising. The voices overlap in heated argument, becoming clearer at his approach.

“Ben, get out of my way. I know what I'm—”

“No, Anila, not that way! It'll—”

_—CRASH!—_

A thunderous, creaking crunch reverberates through the ground. Cries of dismay follow. The cacophony is punctuated by a lone voice, deeper than the others, moaning, _“Oh, no.”_

A sad sort of wet sloshing noise accompanies the plop of a final wooden board as it gives its last gasp, just as Luke steps into their midst, his countenance stormy.

He surveys the destruction. A loose huddle of eight dismayed and stunned-looking students shuffle vaguely away. It reminds Luke of crabs who were, until this second, happily hidden under a rock until a hand comes by to flip them all. More accurately, instead of happy and under a rock, these crabs would be frozen in cowering postures of terror, bracing for impact.

They are now attempting to affect a casual air as they relax their postures, as if to prove they were merely stretching or shielding their eyes from the suddenly very bright sun. Is the sun behind a cloud? Ah. Still, too bright.

Three, in particular, appear especially casual and relaxed.

"So, I see you all have been busy today," he comments, looking at the Three, who shuffle their feet.

His brows furrow deeper as he looks back to the cistern. Planks of charred wood, salvaged metal pipes and muddy fixtures litter the ground. Wisps of gray trail into the air from blackened swathes of stubbled grass, burned to at least fifty meters away. The temple wall is smoking.

Luke notices a cold tingle on his foot and looks down to find a trickle of water running over his shoe.

A faint squelch, barely audible, comes from one pupil's foot.

The Master's eyes trace the water stream across the ground, landing on that foot, then slowly rise up to meet Ben's face.

Their eyes should lock, ordinarily, at this point but today Ben’s gaze is directed in every direction that is not an uncle.

“Ah, nephew. Why don't you be so kind as to explain to me what happened here.”

Ben releases a small breath and closes his eyes.

He towers over everyone like a Coruscanti skyscraper and throughout this scrutiny has been trying to shrink to oblivion. It is plain to anyone with eyes that Ben is, even now, wondering if he might find a shrubbery to stand behind—but Luke coughs and Ben meets his uncle's scowl.

He replies, “The practice field was on fire, Uncle Luke. The sparring from the lightsabers caused sparks that caught in the grass due to the… the lack of rain."

Master Skywalker, bristling with imperious disappointment in _everyone_ so palpable it stings, tilts his head.

"Who was sparring with live sabers?"

"All of us."

"And then what happened?"

Ben hesitates. "Um. I put it out.”

"By cutting open the cistern. You didn't think to just open the spigot and use hosing?"

"That was—I—the fire was going to reach the temple and I—I panicked."

"You sure did."

"I told Fizx to hold it closed while I got the water to—"

"It's not _my_ fault!" protests Fizx, interrupting.

"Not your—!" Ben sputters, whirling toward the other student. "What the kriffing—what are you on about, you're the one that karking—"

_“Language._ All of you, clean this up," cuts Luke. Then he adds: "Not you. Walk with me, nephew.”

Mid-escape, Ben freezes.The others focus like a laser beam on him. Fizx wisely shuts his mouth.

“Of course, Master Skywalker,” Ben manages, voice brittle, tone level until his speech cracks on the last word, betraying him.

“Thank you,” replies Luke curtly.

Lumbering awkwardly past the group like a man on his way to imminent death, Ben follows him up the hill.

Squelch.

Squelch.

Squelch.

After the pair leaves, presumably for a long walk on the grassy side of the beach cliffside where the sand isn't quite so ubiquitous and objectionable, the twins arrive from the woods, juggling several polyhedral objects between them and giggling brightly.

They notice the gathered crowd, abruptly read the situation as _not one appropriate for joviality, _and hastily stow the objects in their garments.

Bleelo, observing their approach, greets them: "Hello, children." He pitches his voice to sound magnanimous. Behind him, Anila rolls her eyes.

The twins glance at him and then at the wreckage.

"What happened here?" the boy, Jeesul, asks.

Bleelo looks to Svenn, not quite sure how to answer. Svenn shrugs.

"Solo's fault," he replies.

At this, the twins nod. Bleelo, relieved to not be the one blaming someone, nods as well. The matter is settled. Rukas glances sideways at Sefinne, who gives him a long look and brushes a lekku over a shoulder, shrugging.

Reenok, the boy’s sister, says, "Right. Anyone want to toss around some holocrons?" And with a grin, she pulls two glowing polyhedrons from her pockets.

The Twi'leks let out matching exasperated groans.


	3. Chapter Three

_"Duke," moaned Lara. "So happy to see me."_

_"Lara," he said softly. He didn't mean to say it softly, of course. It was supposed to have a more masculine baritone to it, a healthy self-respecting growliness at the very least, but it came out sounding like a caress because he was, at best, an alto. Occasionally a soprano. He must be winded from the Gargwaugh._

_The Sith disengaged her saber and sat down on top of the mountain of tentacles and assorted severed limbs. She took out a dagger from her bodice and began to clean her nails. "Didja miss me, Jedi? It's been awhile since we've met one another on the battlefield. I was beginning to worry you'd started to like me."_

_"Lara, why are you here?" (There! Baritone achieved this time!)_

_Duke hitched his sleek, shining lightsaber shaft to his high-waisted yet billowy golden trousers. He did not approach her, resolved to hear her out but not abandon caution. His sleeves had open cuffs that fluttered in the wind so he took off his shirt in case they fought. The sleeves got in the way of his Jedi fighting moves and he didn't want to ruin them with all the blood and stuff. _

_"Well, I came to duel you, of course. Battle to the death, or something." She tossed her hair. It bounced off the leather shirt. It also sparkled in the sun. It matched her saber. It was perfect, actually._

_"What?" stumbled Duke._

_"Death," she repeated. _

_"Ah, yes, that," he agreed, feeling vague._

_"So shall we get on with it, then?" she asked bouncily, hopping down off the corpse._

_"Yes, um. Of course. You know, you didn't have to actually kill that. I had it handled," Duke pointed out._

_"How else was I supposed to get it to stay down so I could properly fight you? What if you woke it up and told it to attack me?"_

_"It wanted to eat me. I assure you it wouldn't have—"_

_Whizz! The swipe of her saber sizzled by his ear as she launched into her opening attack, grinning. He vaulted back and countered with a spinning blow aimed toward her midriff. (It was an exposed midriff.) She danced out of range, taunting him. She twirled her lightsaber._

_"Is that all you've got to show me? After all this time? A girl can't properly say 'Die, Jedi' anymore and expect even a decent opening attack these days? Why don't you try harder, Jedi boy?"_

_"I'll show you harder," Duke countered._

Luke pauses, grinning. _That was a good line_, he thinks to himself.

Outside, the sounds of reconstruction are perforating his creative bubble with a regularity that is making it difficult to keep writing.

He jots down _‘THEY HAVE A SEXY FIGHT’ _and then places his pen down, bookmarking his page with an old scrap of jabba-hide leather that his sister got for him.

He stretches in the hammock, hands behind his head, plotting tomorrow's lessons instead. Today, they'll be meditating in the temple in about an hour, then running laps for the next hour, followed by supper and evening studies in the library.

But tomorrow. Hmm. He leans forward and steeples his fingers.

Tomorrow needs to involve some lessons on impulsivity, he decides. On thinking better under pressure and generally just not_ being like a Solo,_ he thinks. He brushes off a twinge of guilt at that and amends it mentally to_ not being a hothead._

And sparring with live sabers is _off the table _until that damned grass grows back.

Beside the hut, a handful of students work on collecting the remains of the destroyed cistern while others trek through the forest to collect new lumber. The ones clearing the site practice using the Force to lift the pieces, because they figure Master Luke didn't forbid them from _enjoying_ the process.

“It looks like rain,” says Anila, suspending a plank in front of her.

“No, it doesn't,” replies a raspy, reptilian voice on the other side of the pile.

“I had visions of rain in exactly 47 standard minutes from now,” she insists.

“Anila, that's not how the Force works.”

“How would you know, Fizx?” She sticks her tongue out at him.

“Because, I don't know, I'm not an idiot?”

Anila glares at him. She resumes stacking her pile. “What would you know, anyway? You're from a desert planet.”

He hisses.

“I know more than you do,_ obviously. _I don't know if it has occurred to you, but I actually _also live here_. Besides,” he shifts his weight with a grunt, “desert dwellers have far more sensitivity to moisture than... pondspawn like you lot.” He sniffs, reaching to unclasp his canteen. "Thanks to you, we have almost no water left. Not that someone like you would know anything about moisture conservation."

Anila scoffs derisively, but doesn't reply. She wants to be outraged but knows he is not completely wrong. She_ is _from a very rainy moon, and her childhood backyard _was _a swamp. And Ben did try to stop her from pulling out that support that collapsed the structure. But still.

A third voice, Svenn's, chimes in after a time of weighted silence between the two.

“Have either of you seen Ben since yesterday?”

“Hah,” replies Fizx, “No. And we probably won't for another week. Remember when he nearly dropped Reenok off a cliff?”

“Oh yeah.” Anila's eyebrows go up. “The Master had him writing lines, ‘I will not toss my fellow students off cliffs,’ what was it, 3000 times?”

“I heard 5000.”

“You heard it from Ben, then.”

Fizx grins thoughtfully, his teeth showing. “Yeah, I did.”

“But it probably was 5000, knowing Skywalker.”

“Probably.”

The trio shoot a furtive glance over to the nearby thatched hut where their teacher is ostensibly supervising proceedings but is probably deeply involved with writing his Jedi manuscripts.

Anila looks back at Fizx and Svenn and resumes stacking wood into the pile. “Anyway, rain. I feel… the Force is telling me it will rain in... 46 minutes now.”

Fizx rolls his eyes at her. “I think the Force is telling me that you're a moron who will be lucky not to accidentally stab yourself to death with a training saber.”

"Those aren't lethal."

"My point exactly. Also: again, _moron."_

“Oh really. Well I think _the Force_ says that you're an overgrown lizardworm fated to become a _wannabe Sith_ apprenticed to a fat baby toad so you can not only fail at being a Jedi, but fail at being even competently evil.”

"I will gladly sign up for the dark side if it gets me away from _you."_

"Guys," tries Svenn.

“Oh, oh, wait! I forgot to add, a lizardworm with poodoo pox!”

“That's _it!”_ Fizx kicks mud in her face.

She shoots an arm out to stop the splatter midair, glaring at him. But it breaks her concentration on the plank currently hovering between them and so, in a split second decision, she takes the full splatter to the face and shoves her plank toward Fizx.

He dodges it. He lifts a larger, and sopping wet, plank out of the mud and hurls it at her.

“Uh, guys—” tries Svenn again, hovering unhelpfully.

Anila stops it midair with a roar and sends it scuttling and trembling back toward him, but the force of their combined efforts sets it spinning and it hurtles into a hut nearby, detonating the thatched roof.

A feral yell erupts from within.

“WHAT in the seven _everloving Force forsaken hellpits_ of Gheulwixia is going _on!?”_

Master Skywalker bursts from the hut, fury wreathing his face. “Anila!! Fizx!! Svenn! Explain! _Now!”_

Svenn hastily jabs a finger toward the other two and steps away several paces.

“M-master… I-can explain…” stutters Anila.

Fizx glances at her. Opens his mouth to speak.

Anila bursts in, “It was Fizx's fault! He attacked me.”

Fizx's jaw drops. He sputters, “What? No I—! Nuh uh!”

“Yeah huh,” she nods, pointing at him, “He did. And,” she gains momentum, “He said humans are ugly, too.”

“Did not!”

“Master Luke, I felt so horrible!”

_“What! No!”_

“Ow…” She grips her side. “Ow, and look how much I hurt now.”

“Now look here—”

Anila moans. Fizx hops back and forth on his feet, clenching his fists. “I ought to_ really_—”

Luke cuts them off. _“Enough!_ Fizx, you have latrine duty through tomorrow. Anila—"

_ “What? Latrine?! _”

“Anila," he continues sternly, "you finish the salvage pile alone. Svenn, _fix my roof.” _

“What did _I_ do?”

From Ben's hut there is a bellow and a clatter. A sheaf of calligraphy flimsiplast flies out the window.

Luke glances at the sound. Stares for a hard moment. Turns back toward the three, resumes glaring until they disperse like frightened loth kittens. He wheels around and re-enters his hut.

Svenn hears Fizx in the distance mutter, "I only had poodoo pox _once_ when I was _five!" _ Then he finds himself left alone in the clearing under the darkening sky.

The Chiss pauses before walking over to the crumpled sheet from Ben's window. He bends to pick it up. Unfolding it, he reads in perfect Aurebesh and Corellian lettering, ‘I will not be a damn fool Solo’ over and over.

He glances to Ben's hut. Then his eyes slide to Luke's. After a moment, he looks back to Ben's. He takes in a breath. Then he carefully crumples the sheet and places it back on the ground exactly as he found it.

He makes his way toward the tool shed to gather roofing supplies, saying nothing and looking at no one.


	4. Chapter Four

_The nine-tongued creature spoke its many riddles, addling the minds of all who approached. It called to Duke from the shadows between the ruins of Al'ca'th'whir. _

_"Je'dhiii," it whispered, "Who is the fool but the wise man who sees all and nothing? Are you here for the holocron? You will never find what you seek. It will find you, and then it will break you. See what blinds you, or die."_

_But Duke, knowing that this was just a ruse to distract him, ignored the beast and deflected his powerful mind suggestions._

_Lara, nearby, had fallen down and Duke knew the only way to her was through this monster. _

_He extended his hand, channeling all his soul and might into the blast of power he sent singing into the creature's mind. _

_It fell. It writhed on the ground. "Je'dhiii," it gargled, struggling._

_Duke stepped forward, staring it down._

_Then, he showed it the mercy all sithspawn deserved: none. He brought down his lightsaber with finality. _

———————-

By the end of the week, everyone has latrine duty. If it doesn't involve thrashing a roof or collapsing a water cistern or burning the temple, it's the day-to-day annoyances that pile up and drive Luke out of his mind.

Today someone came up with the idea to tell Lim that a rathtar was loose in the woods and everyone had to skip lunch to go find it after the twins came shrieking out of the trees. Nevermind that rathtars are not endemic to this planet and are not the sort to quietly hitchhike a ride. Nor the fact that nearly no one travels to or from this place or even knows how to find it from the Outside.

No. But they still had to go looking. There's a metaphor in there somewhere, Luke thinks.

It was not a rathtar, obviously; in the end it turned out to be a Nadkhi sparrow with a very bad case of the runs and _yes, _ they get noisy, but _really? _ Horribly wriggling violent tentacles couldn't be distinguished from a curtain of vines in the wind, truly?

Luke really likes lunch. Most especially the not-missing-it part.

———————-

Ben is back out again today. He's subdued. He keeps rubbing at his wrist. But he participates in all the routines, the cooking, and the lessons and doesn't throw anyone off cliffs, so that's all right.

———————-

_Lara was lying nearby between a Kvossi divinity pillar and two large boulders, in a puddle. She was bruised, but attractively arrayed with her bodice ripped at one side. _

_ “Duke,” she whispered appreciatively. _

Luke hunches over his writing table for this part. There is a drip from the ceiling that lands every 7.5 standard seconds on his manuscript. It has been raining steadily for the entirety of the week, and he tells himself to be grateful that the cistern is repaired and collecting the water, even though his desert-raised heart is screaming at him to _make it stop, make it dry, escape this punishing hellscape of wet. _ He takes a deep breath, centering his spirit. He directs the dripping away with the Force rather than getting upset about it or, perhaps more importantly, getting up and moving his desk. Occasionally he mistimes it. The manuscript is getting fairly wet.

_ “Lara,” the Jedi knight breathed, “Are you badly hurt? I couldn't hold them all off you. I'm sorry.”_

_ “Yes… it's possible I'm fatally wounded, Duke… I managed to hold off all eight rancors but when the sithspawn appeared it was—” she moaned breathily. “—too much. Ahh! My side." _

Luke looks down and scribbles out "eight," replacing it with "fourteen." He wondered earlier if introducing suddenly rampaging monsters to the fight scene would muddy the romance narrative too much, but now he sees it added just the right amount of spice.

_"Your side," Duke breathed. "We'll get you to some bacta, I just need you to hold on!"_

_"I'm a Sith. Strong is what we do," she murmured._

_Duke of course knew better than that but decided now was not the right time to correct a lady._

_"The sithspawn… it… spoke dark things into my mind, Duke," she continued, delirious. "Confusing things. Things I could never say.”_

_ “What things?” murmured Duke, caressing her cheek. He was still shirtless and unable to do anything to stop the venom's progress._

_ “Things… about… about—”_

_ “Yes, Lara?”_

_She gripped his arm. She whimpered. _

_"About… you…"_

_Duke inhaled sharply, then met her gaze. _

_It was a hooded gaze. _ Definitely_ hooded. Her pupils were very black. But then again, he thought, they were always black, weren't they, so he couldn't tell if that was supposed to mean anything. Maybe her irises were a bit less yellowy? He'd have to go re-read those holobooks to remember for certain. But hooded, yes._

_"I can't stay on the dark side and want… to be with you… I have… to choose…before I…" She slipped from his grasp out of consciousness..._

Luke pauses to evaluate this last line. He rather likes all the ellipses. He decides to put even more in when he edits this later.

A rapping on his door draws him out of his reverie.

Force, does he hate people rapping on his door.

“Master Skywalker?”

He looks at the door.

The rapping intensifies.

A part of him considers, just for the tiniest moment, pretending not to be home.

He scowls at the door…

But the impulse passes like a fleeting shadow.

It_ is _pouring rain. Whoever it is is getting soaked out there. He sighs and waves the door open.

The instant it unlocks, in sloshes a dripping wet Trissk. He is holding his hood over his eyes and looks to be debating the ethics of shaking off his clothes on his master's floor.

Trissk, who handles the comms station duties for the camp most days, knows diplomacy somewhat better than the others and, because of this, he concludes that he had best remain quietly puddling in the doorway.

He is followed by a very moist R2D2, streaming curses.

"Oh, uh—" starts Luke before Artoo cuts him off with a series of rude and highly descriptive opinions about being left waiting in the downpour.

Trissk recedes deeper into his voluminous hood, trying with marginal success to mask his amused expression.

"Artoo, stop embarrassing me in front of my students," Luke complains, exasperated.

Artoo whistles.

"No, this one speaks binary, that's _why I put him on comms duty, _ you metal bucket."

The astromech's dome swivels toward the student. Artoo chirps. The dome swivels back to Luke and there is a pregnant pause. Luke raises one eyebrow. Under his dripping leather, Trissk's grin deepens.

"Yeah, Artoo. So watch it," Luke says. Straightening, he addresses both of them. "What brings you by?"

More beeps.

"A message? From Leia?"

Boo-_wheep. _ Beep, skoo-_weee. _

Trissk clarifies. “Master, Senator Organa asked to talk to you about the upcoming Centrist negotiations in the New Republic Senate. There is something she said she needed your expertise in."

“Oh,” Luke nibbles his knuckle, ruffling his mustache absently. “Thank you, Trissk. Artoo. I'll come down to the comms tower in half an hour or so. I'll, uh, relieve you of your shift there for the afternoon when the rain lets up a bit."

"Actually she's… waiting for you. She insisted you speak with her right away. Sir."

“Oh,” he repeats.

———————-

Ben's been walking in the woods recently. Most days, he kicks rocks and hits things with a stick, the way that he has always done when he’s wanted to escape a troubled thought. He sends pebbles whizzing through the branches overhead, rapid-firing them from his palm with the Force. He tends to bullseye sparrow nests without really intending to and the discombobulated avians jabber and flap around when it happens, causing him both a shy smile and a twinge of guilt.

Sometimes, he tries to block out the gnawing sense of foreboding he feels inside by throwing himself into an activity until he can't breathe. Sparring, or going for a run for hours, or just endless calligraphy even—these numb his mind with fatigue enough to push it out.

Other times, he distracts himself by reciting emotional Alderaanian sonnets about moons or rustic bawdy herder songs about nerfs and making up his own original versions: 

_There once was a herder of nerf_  
_Whose smell was as bad as the turf_  
_With a flourish he bowed_  
_As he then belched aloud_  
_To his lady-love so she'd obserf._  


Today, he is in a mood so bleak that none of his techniques have alleviated it and he collapses to the ground in a huff, batting at the rain on his hood. The melancholy he feels demands no shuttering of his soul; it has a life of its own and pours out of him as it never has before.

_Iridescent wings, _ he thinks. He blinks at the dripping water that falls off the branches onto his sleeves.

_Fettered feathers, dappled sunlight_  
_Careless of the ebbing soul,_  
_Flutters like a happy, oblivious bird_  
_Upon the dying creature's back…  
_

_Tweet._

By the end of an hour he has wrung himself out and as the rain deepens he bends to sob into his hands. But he feels lighter.

Lighter and darker.

———————-

Elsewhere in camp, a blue glow fills a little metal room, lighting up Luke's face, a multitude of wires and toggles on the walls and a still-disgruntled droid in the corner.

“Luke! It's been ages! How are you all on that forsaken rock, wherever you are?"

Leia's boisterous voice carries through the distortion of the holofeed and warms Luke's chest, despite himself.

“Leia! It's so good to see you. It has been… an adventure. Things are fine. How's Han? And what's with the hurry?”

“Oh. No hurry.”

Luke gives the hologram a confused frown.

“Wait, what do you mean, no hurry? I jogged all the way here and interrupted _my advanced meditation class _to get out here because you said to hurry and you're saying it was for no reason?” He gestures broadly to the comm station around him, set on a promontory of rock by a cliff wall, knowing full well she cannot see his surroundings.

But the Senator laughs at him. “Luke, I can feel it when you're lying to my face, you oaf.”

“Okay, _fine, _ I wasn't teaching, but I _was_ busy.”

“Busy with what?”

Luke hesitates. “Uhmm.”

Leia quirks her mouth at him.

“Jedi things.”

“I see.”

"I _was. _ You wouldn't understand. Too… mystical. But look,” he says, steering the discussion back into safer waters, “why did you tell them that it was urgent if it wasn't?”

“Oh, that was because since you embraced your, hmm, monkish lifestyle, you seem to have lost a bit of your concept of time. And—”

“That's nonsense!”

“All right, you want to know, really, Luke? Fine. The last time I commed you, my dear beloved brother, it took you three hours to respond. _Three hours, you nerfherfer_, and I had other things to attend to and I had to leave. I got dragged into a godawful soiree for the Gatalentan ambassador's daughter's engagement to the Senator from Glee Anselm's third oldest nephew, the one with the purple gills. And you _know_ that there was endless tedious drama at that party, questions of compatibility right away, given, as you are aware, I'm sure, the aquatic nature of the Nautolans, not to mention the question of where any younglings would be raised because the Gatalentans can't exactly breathe _underwater, _ but the Glee Anselm delegates insisted on an _oceanic _nursery, and the guests were as dull as bricks; I talked all night about cakes and we all had to dress in the most outlandishly drab outfits that it was an affront to all good taste."

She sees her brother's face has gotten that glassy look that tells her he's no longer with her. ("Traveling in the Force," he calls it when his mind vacates his brain and he stares blankly. She sees that empty, vacant look on many people that are not Force sensitive, though, and thinks Luke is completely full of poodoo.) She shows him no mercy.

"I would have gone with Holdo on that one if I hadn't had to curry favor with his faction at the time, due to that whole misplaced medical supplies incident that led to the strikes in all of their facilities Inner Rimside. And I did that," she gestures pointedly at the air, "instead of hearing from you when I had _twenty precious minutes_ and don't even _get me started about the two times before that_ when you didn't answer. Clam storms? _Really? _"

Luke sits up. "Uhh—"

"I really don't want to hear it."

Luke, chastened, looks down, speechless.

He opens his mouth.

“Your temple," she interrupts, "How is that coming along?"

"Oh! Yes," he answers, glad for a topic he can seize on even while he is mentally still catching up with the course of this conversation. He is somewhere around "clams."

“Last year when we talked, it was in the planning stages and you seemed excited about it being finished by this summer around this time. Have you got the library set up?"

“Oh... yes! Yeah. It's… three-quarters built now. It keeps getting nearly burnt down for various reasons. Ben helped a lot.”

"With the... building or the burning?"

"Building! Um. Well, haha, mostly. A little of both. It sank into a swamp, first one. Then the second one fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the third one's stayed up."

“It must be beautiful. I wish I could see it,” she murmured wistfully.

“You will. When it's done. When I cut Ben's braid you can come and see him celebrate his ascension to the Jedi Order. He'll be the first."

Leia's lower lip folds under the upper for a moment.

“Wow, is he really getting so old? Is he much taller?"

"He's as tall as Han," he replies.

Leia sucks in a breath. "Kriff, I… still see him in my mind as that little boy. It's going to be so strange to see him again. Is he well? How is his temper?"

"Ah. It's… progressing. I'm teaching him everything I know. I've got it handled. He's learning more every day and I send him on spiritual retreats. He's in good hands."

Leia smiles. "I know."

"He's so strong in the Force, Leia. I've never seen anyone so strong. Not even Yoda."

A memory of Ben in the forest rises unbidden, of smashing a tree repeatedly with kicks, his fists, then his lightsaber, until everything is bloody and ends with an afternoon in bacta—Luke shuts that memory down hard before Leia gets a hint of his thoughts.

“But his calligraphy—wow is that coming along _great.” _

She smiles, half amused, half wistful. “I'm sure it is, Luke.”

"So how is Han?"

"Han is Han."

"I know what you mean." Luke winks. "But tell me everything anyway."


	5. Chapter Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now with THE BEST ART EVER from the inimitable [situation_normal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/situation_normal/)

Ben sits on his favorite rock out by the sandiest part of the dunes. It's a wide, flat, smooth boulder with just the right amount of leg room to swing his feet in the air when no one's looking. The sand skitterbugs make patterns below him and he likes to dizzy himself idly watching them, imagining them into star charts and hyperspace routes. These thoughts inevitably bring him back to thoughts of piloting with his father years ago and each time he quickly cuts them off. But he also doesn't stop coming here to watch them.

He reaches for his canteen of gloperade, a recipe courtesy of Lim's cousin, who claims drinking it enhances mental clarity as well as enhancing other things. Ben is not sure what that means, but he does note a boost in his performance when he writes.

Wiping his mouth on his sleeve, he draws out a sheet of flimsipast and begins.

_A soft night  
The caress of the hopeful zephyr   
Touching the sand like a feather  
Traces its smiling curves into a soulful beach   
Against the tide and woeful weather.___

_Star lines  
One day is like a thousand tiny footprints  
The sons and daughters of those lost in the sky  
Make tracks, star maps, to reunite one day  
With those lost, like a constellation in the pilot's eye. _

Ben looks down at what he's written.

_Damnit_.

———————

_There was an elevator. _

_The ruins where Duke rescued his erstwhile nemesis-turned-nearly-girlfriend were riddled with secret tunnels, mazes, and booby traps._

_Ha ha. _

_In one such maze Duke found himself trudging, having made a floating raft cleverly out of vines and their clothes (waste not, want not), suspending her body in the air upon it. _

_He was very skilled at lifting things like rocks and people. Yoda taught him that. _

Luke stops, reminding himself that this is _not_ autobiographical. He scribbles that line out.

_He began to become lost in the maze when Lara's head flopped to the side, bouncing some of her hair into his face, and she whispered, "Duke… I see the way from up here." Her hair smelled like strawberries and nighttime._

_"You do?"_

_"Yes," she replied in a gravelly voice. "That way."_

_Where she pointed, there was a chasm, a great void in the earth from which fetid odors rose. Beyond it, a sleek black vessel sat, misty tendrils curling around it aesthetically._

_"Ahh, you do! How will we get across, Lara? Jedi can't fly."_

_"True, that's too true," she sighed. "But… you can lift me on this stretcher... and maybe, you can sort of… hold on underneath, and we can float across together."_

_"That's genius," exclaimed Duke._

_"I know," breathed Lara. And then she fell unconscious again._

_While she slept, Duke slowly levitated the mat, gripped the edges, and floated them both to safety and to the bacta tank she had conveniently ready on her ship_.

Luke pauses to consider this bit. _Is it believable that there would be bacta on board? _ Nevermind, he decides. Who cares.This is _fiction_. Onward.

_Once healed from the sithspawn's terrible wound and venom, Lara sat up._

_"Duke… I've been thinking… in order for us to survive…"_

_"Yes, Lara?" _

_"We need to work together. We can be enemies again, after. If you want."_

_"Yes," agreed Duke heartily._

_Lara turned to him, not sure which part he was agreeing to. "I feel the presence of the relic at the base of those cliffs," she continued._

_"Yes," breathed Duke._

_She gave him a Look. "So… we're agreed then? We go down together?"_

_Duke nodded bravely, imbuing the gesture with masculine strength._

_And that is how the two ended up by the cliff edge several minutes later, peering down toward what looked like a vast swamp deep in the heart of the crevasse._

_"Oh, look, Duke, an elevator," exclaimed Lara, pointing._

_Indeed, there appeared to be an ancient lift, some remnant technology from the ruined civilization, and it seemed to still be working. They stepped inside._

_After a few long moments of fumbling, Duke had the thought that this elevator was a rather romantic setting. It was closed in and he could hear her breathing. It was exceptionally sultry breathing._

_"Romantic? Are you kidding?" scoffed the Sith. "We're hurtling down a cliff toward a swamp and maybe both of us will die momentarily so, while I'd agree that my heart is racing, it is from the thrill of being about to possibly be killed. I like almost-dying," she added absently._

_Duke blinked. Had he said that aloud? Oh, kriff, he had._

_"Oh… y-yes, I meant, uhh, it would be, uh, romantic if someone else was here and they liked plummeting…"_

_"Ah, yes, of course. Oh, Duke, look! We've arrived," she announced. _

"Uncle Luke?"

Luke drops his hand down on the table abruptly. The pen clatters.

"Yes! What! Yes!"

He schools his features to appear less panicked. "What."

Ben ducks under the doorframe. He nods to Luke, pads over to the corner to drop a canvas satchel off his shoulder onto the floor and then glances around the cabin. His eye catches on Luke's scattered parchment for a moment before he announces, "I came to say, Bleelo and Kari finished the transcription of _Chozwxc Ka Dzuug Ih _from San Tekka's last collection and we were wondering what you wanted us to start next."

His glance flickers once more across Luke's ill-concealed notes and his mouth quirks up at one side.

"Since I know that preserving the ancient lore is important to you," he continues, "I thought I'd come right away and not waste any time."

"Yes, uhh, yes." He peers over his shoulder at the cascading mountain of disorganized miscellany behind him; ostensibly, there's a bookcase somewhere under there. "Sure. I have something here—"

Luke gathers up the manuscript sheets on the desk in a way that simultaneously screams _I am being very casual about this; there is nothing to see here_, and, _dear gods I will incinerate these if I move any faster. _ He places them in a stack, face down (Ben rolls his eyes) with a canvas. notebook on top of them and then turns to retrieve a large bound book.

Luke turns around again and Ben hastily erases his grin.

"Here you are; take this and tell them it's in the language of the Whills."

"The Wills?"

"Yes, with an H. Hhhwills."

"Hwills."

"It has a poem at the beginning, I think. Something about 'refined Jedi sight' was all I could make out of it. Take it back to them and see what they can come up with."

Ben accepts the book, interest piqued by the book but far more by the _current composition, _and departs.

Luke watches him leave. He peeks sideways at his manuscript on the table and breathes out a little sigh of relief.


	6. Chapter Six

Meditation class takes place in the morning. It is less of a class than a guided exercise, each student left to explore the Force on their own, but Luke makes a point to treat it with academic seriousness and dignified ritual solemnity.

Ben sits with the other students, perfectly postured, back straight, hands on his knees. The perfect padawan. He is assigned to the front row, a fact that never fails to bother him due to his towering height, but Luke tells him it is due to seniority as the oldest and strongest student, and for this reason, it's his job to sit in front and to sometimes lead lessons as well. He is comfortable leading, at least. Then he doesn't feel like he's blocking anyone's view.

Anila and Svenn are bickering quietly about space between their mats. Anila is adamant about Svenn's hindquarters not leaving "boy sweat" on her mat and he is as righteously indignant as a person can be at a pin-drop whisper. He is just getting to very heated whispered threats of "what about _spitting_ on your mat, how about that?" when Luke's voice cuts the air: "Let us begin."

Sefinne and Rukas stop kissing for what Ben estimates to be five seconds. He slides a glance sideways at them over his shoulder. They stop wiggling lekku, or whatever, at each other. He rolls his eyes.

The gong sounds.

“Breathe in, feel. Breathe out."

The class… breathes. It's a little distracting when they all do it together.

"Sense the life in the dry grass, the warm earth, the air itself,” Luke murmurs to the group assembled in the temple.

“Breathe in, now out... Touch the interconnectedness of that life, weave your fingers through it, the endless movement toward balance. The will of the Force is peace. Tranquility. Compassion. Transcendence."

More breathing.

Ben's mind catches on _transcendence. _ Two students here are not sensitive enough to the Force to become full Jedi. Bleelo and Kari, here to learn and record the lore of the Force, attend every lesson but they do not learn to control the currents of power or to_ transcend. _Aside from Ben, they are the best scholars in the room, peerless calligraphers, multilingual, deeply reverent toward the Force, and impressively knowledgeable.

They seem, too, to meditate more effectively than any of the other students.

He wonders if this is because they have a better experience of it than he does. He always finds a sense of unrest when he does this, an imbalance, peace and terror vying for dominance, the light and the dark and something always clawing to escape from an unknown place in his soul.

But those two… the pair of them never fail to exude a sense of peace at the end of these exercises. Perhaps, he muses, the Force has different gifts for them that he cannot understand.

He wonders if he envies those without that connection to the Force. He decides that maybe he does.

The gentle lull of Luke's voice takes him out of coherent thoughts for a time. His awareness drifts and eventually brushes against a presence in the darkness, far away, somewhere out beyond the known galaxy. A moving sentience, powerful, ever present in his dreams. It speaks to him, as always.

"Son of light and darkness, I see you."

"I see you," he replies.

"Look for the Force beyond the currents of Light," the presence murmurs, velvet, "the shifting shadows in your veins and the flickering, faltering, light. It is a fire inside you, and the light cast upon the wall is the evidence of its existence. Do you feel it?"

"I feel it. Yes. I feel the fire."

"The Light is like that reflection on the cave wall, the reality is the fire. Like a fragile parchment, a fragment of the fleeting day. Look below the surface."

"I am looking."

"It is an ocean; do you see to the bottom?"

"...No."

"No, indeed. It is full to the brim with knowledge, with secrets that only the brave can find and wrest from the depths. Son of night and day, you have the power to reach the bottom, to thrive in the deep without drowning, if you choose. Don't look away from the truth. The Light that you touch so easily is only a shallow reflection of reality, a magic mirror that shows you what you want to see."

"I seek the truth."

"You will have it."

"I will search for it."

"When you find it, seize it."

"I will."

A gong breaks him out of his trance, jarring him. He looks up to see Luke giving him a faintly quizzical look. Ben scrambles to assemble a mask of placid impassivity while his body reconnects to the physical plane.

Luke is still looking strangely at him at the end of the closing ritual several minutes later.

The students stretch languidly and begin to disperse. Well, most of them. The two with lekku start up the… wiggling... again.

Ben sighs and gets up to go. The master's attention has moved on as he gathers up his pack and heads down to the beach. Bleelo and Kari smile and nod at him; Kari tips her calligraphy pen to her forehead and winks.

Something in the air smells like… oh, yes. That's spit. There are little wet blotches outlining a square the size of Anila's mat.

Ben sighs again and walks carefully around the damp spots.

———————-

Around an hour after meditation ends, while lunch is cooking and most of the students are gathered back by the huts, Ben sits fishing when Luke drops by.

He has been composing poetry in his mind again.

_Alderaanian roses, _he thinks, looking to the forest.  
_On the cold metal kitchen table  
Small woodland violets  
Buried under the underbrush and fallen,   
rotting logs  
The leaves are chewed  
The violets near withered  
Not like the roses  
Cut   
Perfect  
Arranged in a vase, here one day and  
Dead  
The next_

He feels the change in the air then, the shift in the Force that signals a sentient creature approaches. Ben pokes the tip of the fishing pole to the water, tapping the surface idly. He watches the concentric rings bloom outward.

Luke takes up a spot near him on a nearby rock. Ben looks up through his hair as his uncle adjusts himself until comfortable enough to speak. Luke shakes out his sleeve, which caught under his leg.

The Master Jedi looks concerned, as if preparing to address something of import. Ben braces himself.

"Heyyyyyy, nephew," drawls Luke hesitantly, "I noticed earlier today—”

Ben can't help the jump in his heart rate. Surely Uncle Luke didn't eavesdrop on his earlier communion… with—the—with—he couldn't, right? His hand tightens minutely around the pole.

"—your birthday is coming up soon, and you're going to be completing your padawan level around the same time—"

Oh...

"—and I was thinking, maybe, to combine the two with, say, Life Day and throw a real party for everyone, give 'em a good time, what do you think?"

"I—" Ben starts, thoughts derailed entirely.

Then, _Yes, a terrific time, _ he thinks. _Wonderful for everyone except me. You'll give me a new Jedi robe to wear—burlap of the highest quality scratchiness—declare me the heir to the New Order and the embodiment of hope to the Galaxy, give me a stern lecture about humility and control, and then send me off to find a cave for an ascetic retreat for a week. I will starve and go thirsty and carve lines on the wall counting the days till I can come back and then tell you a made-up story about confronting the dark side. That is exactly my idea of a good time. _

"I heard you talked to my parents," he says instead.

"Oh," blinks Luke, caught off guard. "Leia. Yeah. Yeah, I talked to her. Didn't get Han."

He squints at Ben under bushy eyebrows, waiting for him to elaborate.

Ben doesn't.

Luke coughs. "Yeah. Your mother! She asked about you."

"She did?"

"Yep."

Ben grits his teeth after a further stretch of silence. Getting Luke to talk about this is like pulling fused bolts out of the _Falcon. _"What did she ask about me?"

"Just how you are."

"That's it?"

"...Well, she remembers you being shorter..."

Ben winces slightly. "Shorter?"

"Yeah, I told her you're as tall as Han."

"I bet I'm taller," he blurts before he realizes it. "Don't really know, though," he amends, "I don't know his height. What's Han—I mean dad—doing these days?"

"Oh! We talked all about him for _ages. _ He's been running shipments off Kashyyyk the last two years, Chewie's aunt Hyungyyyksh or Hshyyghhsdhh or whatever, heh heh, is sick and has been needing some extra family presence and so the pair of them have kept close to the planet while she's recovering. Chewie's son's been helping with trade, ripping people's arms off where needed, that sort of thing. Not that I approve, of course," Luke leans in conspiratorially, "but it does a heart good to see family so close." He smiles.

Ben turns away. "Yeah."

"I, uh, told her the temple's coming along."

"Did she maybe say she wanted to talk to me? Did my father send any message? It's been a year now since I actually spoke with one of them."

"Oh. Um. Well, she—not as such… Look, kid, the thing is, I, we didn't have a lot of time." Luke looks up at the sky, finding a cloud and focusing his scrutiny on it. "She had a lot going on at the same time as the call and we had to talk politics about some really important stuff going on in the galaxy right now. It wasn't a call about you. No, I mean. It _was, _ but we didn't get to say much. We wanted to."

Ben, after a moment, poking the water with his pole, nods calmly. "Thank you, Uncle. A Life Day party sounds fun." He stands, stretches, and goes for a walk. Luke nods to him. It occurs to him several minutes later that Ben's fishing rod is floating out to sea.


	7. Chapter Seven

_Lara and Duke entered the swamp together, wary and sloshing. Fog rose from the smelly water, swirling and brushing against the towering, twisted roots. A pulse of darkness up ahead drew them inexorably closer. Lara felt it coil around her chest, speaking lies and horrors, the evil dark calling to her soul. Duke held her hand. _

_"Be strong, Lara. Resist it. And when you can't anymore, and you inevitably give in to the evil, I will be strong for you," he told her heroically._

_"Duke… " She looked at him with adoration. "You have always been here to save me from myself." And she kissed him right there in the swamp. On the mouth, specifically. _

Luke pauses. Although this moment is what he's been building toward the whole story, he is unsure of the mechanics beyond pressing lips together, when it comes down to it. He knows what would happen if they had lekku—Force help him, he's observed enough of his students' antics to make a grown man vomit and he does _not_ wish to think about _ that_—but these are not Twi'lek characters and thus other appendages must be employed. He starts with… hands.

_Duke touched her hair with his hands. Luckily for him, he had two of them. _

_"You smell like strawberries and nighttime," he murmured against her ear._

_"You smell like rotting fish and turpentine," she cooed back._

_"What?"_

_"Everything here smells like that. We're in a swamp. I can't actually smell you, Duke."_

_"Oh. I guess that makes sense."_

_She touched his hair. _

…

_She kissed him some more. _

Luke is _really_ not sure what happens next. He leans back to rifle through his bookshelf until he finds his dog-eared copy of _Lust On The Dustball_ and squints at it.

———————-

From a nearby building there comes a sound of banging. Then yelling in a language Luke does not know, then a lot of screeching and squawking. Fizx appears to be catching lunch. Luke takes a deep breath and turns back to more scholarly studies.

_First comes the day_, he reads. _Then comes the night_.

A feral scream tears through camp, punctuated by heavy stomping and thumping.

_After the darkness_

"Aniiiiilllaaaa, help me, you useless pond plop! Don't let it get away again! Augh!"

_Shines through the light. _

"No, not that left, the_ other _way, the other left! Left!"

_The light shines, _ he thinks, pondering tomorrow's lesson. _What does it shine on? What are the qualities of shining? What makes a thing… shiny? _

A rock comes careening through his open window; he telekinetically catches it midair and drops it harmlessly on the ground. Another few pebbles clatter against the outside window frame.

"Ow!" yells someone caught in the crossfire. Svenn?

Ben's deep voice bellows onto the scene, scattering everyone. A door slams. Several more doors slam.

_A thing that shines… drives away the darkness with its intensity, its brightness… its strength,_ thinks Luke. _Ah. But darkness only comes when light recedes or, in other words, gives up. _

Fizx, elsewhere, whoops in triumph and a final "BGAWK" sounds through the scattered huts before the quiet settles back in. Luke scrubs over his beard, scrunches up his mouth, and cracks open the latest treatise labeled ‘On Conquering the Dark’ from his shelf. He bends to read as the sounds of the oven in the kitchen start up.

———————-

It's muffin day in the camp.

Lim, taciturn and ordinarily unnoticed by virtually everyone (unless he is fleeing Rathtars), becomes a completely different person on this single day of the cycle, knocking on everyone's doors at first light and setting a great bonfire in the temple yard.

Muffin day, alone among all the galactic holidays one could choose from, captures Lim's heart and soul unlike anything else, and no one is excused from the festivities. No one understands why, and no one dares ask.

The special muffin tools, hidden somewhere in Lim's cabin and which made it smuggled past Luke onto the planet somehow (rumors say it involved subterfuge, disassembly, and possibly a conspiracy with Artoo), come forth to the bonfire with fanfare.

By midday, Lim has flavors and creams and goo fillings of a dozen varieties arranged on log tables and rocks and everyone gathers. Even Luke comes around to join in. The stodgy Master, who originally adamantly opposed the whole affair, cancels all classes and chores today to celebrate.

Lim proudly removes the latest muffin-prong from the fire, opens its steaming compartment and lays a cobalt blue pastry beside a line of orange creations. Ben sits with the others. He chats with Svenn, content for a time, munching on a greenish one that reminds him of something his old nanny droid used to cook. It's sort of… grassy, in a comforting way. He hates that it reminds him of home, but eating it distracts him from that ever-present shadow of doom that nips at his heels when he forgets to be unhappy.

"It's time for the muffin song," Lim announces.

The moment of the muffin song is the culmination of muffin day.

No one sings except Lim, but he does it in such a heartfelt, earnest way that those present can't help but feel a sense of shared joy, a unity and brightness unsullied by the realities of the Galaxy, and then a melancholy when the muffin in the song inevitably dies because it must be eaten.

No one knows what the muffin means or why it is celebrated, and it is too late to ask him, but that is no longer important anyway.

At the end of the day, they disperse to their cabins and head to bed, sated.

Ben sleeps too, but unlike his peers, he has nightmares. The frightening dreams aren't what's unusual, nor the thrashing in his sleep and crying out and the things that everyone is used to hearing from his cabin. What's unexpected is that he spends the night running from a blue muffin that calls itself Darth Vader. And that this muffin leaks grass-flavored goo on him when he finally stabs it with his lightsaber after moving in slow motion for hours.

How does he know its flavor?

He just _knows_.

That might be what disturbs him most. When he wakes the next day, it is with profound relief.


	8. Chapter Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a short chapter today, folks

The temple is almost finished with construction.

_ “Oh, oh— Duke, that's it, that's—oh! Oh! Yes!” _

_"Size matters not," Duke whispers, quoting somebody. "Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm. You should. My ally is the Force. And a powerful ally it is."_

_Their cast-off clothing entwined, their hands caressing as a gentle whisper, bodies tortured deliciously with the light of the twin suns on their skin as the two lovers reached their—_

The author, sweaty, pauses to wipe his brow with a trembling sleeve.

_ “Duke,” Lara moaned. “Oh, Duke.” She leaned forward to whisper in his—_

Karking kriffing karknuts. Something has exploded in what sounds like the twins' cabin. He can hear Artoo screaming and detritus falling onto the nearby rooftops. He scrambles to the door, knocking over his chair.

He rounds the corner to see Artoo sailing down the hill, madder than he has ever witnessed the astromech (and that's saying something) shrieking binary profanities into the distance. From the twins' doorway, or what remains of it, Jeesul and Reenok materialize looking blackened and sheepish.

Jeesul holds up a wrench, inspecting it as if it holds the reason for what just occurred. Reenok brushes some debris off her shoulder, then noticing some on her brother's shoulder, brushes off his too.

"I don't even want to know, but should I ask what happened here?" says Luke.

The twins exchange glances.

"...No?"

"Right, then." Luke turns around and walks back to his hut.

———————-

Ben breaks out an ancient Malachorian replica saber from the decorative collection in the atrium when he gets bored of sticks and practice sabers. He is alone in the temple and locks eyes on the hanging rows of electroblades, vibroscythes, sabers, and other weapons he can't parse.

He takes one down.

He decides he likes the spurts of fire by the hilt and, forgoing a request for permission that he knows he would never get, he swings it experimentally.

It feels like poetry in his hands. He closes his eyes. He begins a practice combat form, flowing through the movements like liquid and sensing the air and objects around him without use of his physical senses. He feels himself falling into a pure energy, stepping into forward stance, now back stance, now spinning and jabbing with a practiced grace that belies his gangly body. He feels… passion. He feels alive. His hair falls into his face; the fierce connection to the currents around him is almost savage as sweat begins to pool on his forehead and shoulders.

Without warning, the saber's age and state of repair betray him. The quillons destabilize halfway through one of the flourishes in his form; an electric sizzle is the only warning he gets before a jolt of plasma arcs through the air. The casing cracks, the emitter nearly vaporizes and it is only by virtue of the Force's warning that he avoids losing an arm. The stench of ozone stings his mouth and nostrils as he stares in shock at his outstretched arm.

When he regains his composure, he realizes his mouth is open and deliberately closes it. He turns to look down. The kyber survives, thank the Force, but the rest is a twisted, melted mess.

The broken parts on the floor smolder, one of the couplers sparking intermittently. Minutes tick by as he stands there frozen, debating, until at last he sighs, slumping his shoulders and collecting the pieces to take to Luke.

His punishment is to learn how to repair it, of course. Ben expected that, but then Luke gets a glint in his eye and he knows the second punishment brewing is going to be something worse, something special. Something terrible.

"Ek," calls Luke.

"Yes, Master?"

"Help my nephew in his studies today. Ben is to run up the mountain and back down three times today and needs your assistance."

Ben visibly tenses. _Three? _

Assistance, as it turns out, means carrying Ek, the little Rodian, on his shoulders for the whole day while Ek sings battle hymns and gets to tell him to lift rocks and run fast downhill. Ek has a terrific time.

Ben... less so.

When he gets in that night, well after dinner, and drags himself across the field to his hut he catches Luke's eye through the window for a brief moment. Ben shoots him an icy stare. Luke, seeing him, meets his glare, raises his eyebrows and shuts the window.


	9. Chapter Nine

Luke and Ben argue.

The underground holo newsfeeds bring rumors of a new presence in the Galaxy, a mysterious First Order, something sleek and shadowed out beyond the Rim.

Ben thinks, when he hears it, that there is an obvious approach to the news: curiosity and moderation. He suggests one evening at supper—foolishly, as it turns out—that they give the First Order the benefit of the doubt. That _would_ be the Jedi way, compassion and generosity, would it not?

Luke growls at him for this comment and flatly tells Ben he doesn't know what he's talking about. The presence in the Unknown Regions is a looming, menacing evil, full of darkness, he declares.

Ben defends his position stubbornly. "Maybe I _do_ know what I'm talking about. Maybe this isn't something to cower from. The Force is like an ocean. I've seen it. We've all seen it, but we cut ourselves off and won't look below the surface. I wonder, Uncle, if you're content to float your whole life, like a loth otter. But we'll be blind when the dark side rises and then how will we fight? It feels like we have nothing and we're passing nothing on." He gestures to Bleelo and Kari. "It's not right."

The scholars, immensely discomfited to suddenly find themselves involved in this debate, edge backward in their chairs nervously.

Luke tears into Ben, pontificating on the horrors of Vader and the Emperor, warning of the traps the dark side lays to catch the morally weak. Ben bristles visibly. He gives his uncle a very emphatic opinion about his sanctimonious attitude and soon it becomes a full-blown shouting match.

The quarrel ends explosively and decisively, with Master Luke announcing to the whole room that Ben's "truculent anger issues" are what got him sent here, and with Ben, for his part horrified and incensed beyond rational thought, sending all the cooking pots flying, flinging up his arms and storming out.

He knows this proves Luke's point, but he is too far gone to care. He doesn't return for four days. Luke spends the time teaching pointed lessons about guarding against dark side impulses.

He doesn't go looking for Ben.

———————-

When he gets back, the other students notice that Ben appears calmer and more submissive toward Master Skywalker. Or if not calmer, exactly, perhaps less uncertain and more settled in some private decision. Maybe he experienced an epiphany in the forest or found some spirit guide to lend him wisdom in the Force. No one can guess. But what is clear is that Ben has a different demeanor than before, and he does not talk about the First Order again.

Rather more worrying, he does dip into the dark side during sparring and twice loses himself to it entirely. This coincides with noticeable advancement in skill and control of his powers, and on the second occasion the sheer force of it jolts Luke's attention out of a full trance half a click away. He runs. Tearing down the path, he arrives to find Ben with his foot on Svenn's neck and his saber at his heart, eyes alight.

"Yield," he demands.

"Solah," mutters Svenn dejectedly.

"Ben, a word."

The tall padawan glances up through a mop of matted hair and a black eye. He straightens, wiping blood off his cheek. "Master Luke?"

Luke jerks his head and thumbs over his arm toward the path.

Ben, acquiescent, takes his foot off Svenn and comes willingly. Behind him, as he walks away, he hears mutters.

"Karking darksider."

"What the hell was that, Solo?"

"I thought he was gonna really do you, Svenn."

Neither Ben nor Luke say a word in anyone's earshot, but for a long while after that no one sees Ben outside of his cabin.

———————-

_Duke and Lara…in the swamp…_

…

_Duke…_

...

_Duke…_

Luke stares at the blank page. He scratches out the line and starts again.

_The intrepid duo held hands while crossing over a narrow rope bridge. Lara told Duke that she was capable on her own, thanks, and he respectfully let go._

_Then she fell off the bridge_.

No. He crumples up the page, sighs, and feeds it to his stove. He tries again.

_Duke offered kindly to hold her hand, in a gentlemanly way because he was not a terrible person, and she said, “No, you're a creep.” Duke pushed her off the bridge_.

"Aaarrghh," cries Luke, frowning.

He puts away the manuscript for the night.

———————-

Ben, meanwhile in his own cabin, body aching, tries to find solace in his own way.

_Darkness  
No parents  
Super ascetic  
Doesn't make it better_

He huffs.

_Dumb uncles  
Annoying classmates   
A couple are okay I guess  
Karking kriffing sleemo dirtball   
Kriff, kriff kriff kriff kriff_

He flips the pen onto the table and rips up the sheet. He looks away. Then, pulling his pillow over his head, he drops onto his bed and jerks the covers over his arm. He kicks one boot off his foot and it hits the wall. The second one falls softly when he shakes it off; he peeks out, glares at it, raises a hand and sends it hurtling into the wall. He nods, tucks his feet under the covers, and replaces the pillow on his face.

———————-

It's three days later when the twins set fire to the temple, delaying the construction again. This time, it was a prank intended for their erstwhile guardians, the two Twi'leks, involving jet fuel in the water pitchers. But Reenok's hand slipped and the fuel ignited on the power supply to the sound system and half the atrium exploded. To the dismay of many, both Jeesul and Reenok emerged unscathed.

Ben has half a mind to throw both of them over the cliff after the four hundredth bucket of water has his arms in agony and his legs turning to jelly.

Lucky for them, his wrist is very sore from 5,000 calligraphy lines of "I will not explore dark side feelings" and he does not feel like adding "I will not murder my fellow students even though they deserve it" _just _yet.

It's a close thing.

At least Luke makes the twins do everyone's laundry until the library is salvaged and rebuilt. Ben, Kari, and Bleelo, whose transcription work is the majority of what the fire takes, find a special delight in rolling their laundry in the mud, soot, sap or—his favorite—bird droppings before turning it over for washing. It's possible he pees on it once.

Okay, twice.

In return, the twins take twice as long to return the clothes. Ben retaliates by stealing theirs. They complain to Luke and everyone gets latrine duty.

Ben counts it as a net win.

———————-

_It was only a matter of time until Duke sensed danger emanating from the ground below them. A jet of steam erupted without warning two meters from Lara and she jumped away screaming, saber ignited. A popping sound echoed in the swamp around them. Nearby, a low growl made the surface of the water vibrate._

_He looked ahead to the tiny island where the holocron was hidden. A faint golden light shone on it as if the universe was guiding their way._

_Then, more popping sounds happened and suddenly another jet of boiling liquid shot into the air, nearly vaporizing his new girlfriend. Duke lept into action, throwing his arms around her and yanking her out of the way._

_"Steam spurts," he commented. "There's a popping sound preceding them, so we can know to avoid them."_

_She nodded, blowing a wisp of hair out of her eye._

_Hand-in-hand they trod on, closing in on the holocron._

_"But Duke," Lara clung to his arm, stopping him. "What about SOUSes?"_

_"Sithspawn of unusual size? I don't think they exist."_

_At that exact moment a giant tentacle, slimy, ribbed, and massive, swung through the trees, knocking down branches and wrapping around Duke's feet. The falling wood hit Lara on the head and she screamed, as meanwhile Duke was dragged underwater. _

_It was terrifying. Duke thought he would drown. He felt a crushing pressure from all sides closing in on him. The water and the floating debris everywhere blinded and disoriented him until, in a blind panic, he felt his hope giving out._

_He heard Lara yell to him: "Don't give up!"_

_Then, he remembered he was a Jedi and he didn't have to put up with this sort of nonsense. He fumbled for his saber and, wresting it into his grasp, blazed through the creature's flesh in a clean arc. _

_Lara, meanwhile, seized upon the creature's eyestalk and made a quick end to its evil bad existence._

_They looked at each other meaningfully._

_Lara moved to take the holocron in hand, but at the last moment stopped. Waiting. When Duke extended his hand she took it in her own and together they claimed the holocron. _

_"Do you want to be enemies now?" he asked her, concerned._

_"No, I want to give up being a Sith and be a Jedi instead, like you."_

_With joy in his heart, he went back with her and rode up the elevator and this time he kissed her in it._


	10. Chapter Ten

A transmission comes in from Han one day in late fall. He tells Luke that he's gotten into a little spot of trouble with some gangs and is going to go off the radar for a time. Luke passes on the news to Ben, who does not take it well.

Following a vigorous round of furniture kicking, cursing, and slashing of his cabin wall with a lightsaber, Ben receives the sternest reprimand he has ever gotten from his teacher. Luke relieves him of his saber and his shoes.

"That way, you'll do less damage next time you kick something," he explains. He lets him have the shoes back after a week but keeps the saber and informs Ben that he will not be allowed to advance his padawan training on Life Day.

He can have his saber back after that. Maybe.

Ben, when his uncle leaves, slumps on his cabin floor with his head on his knees. He is too adult to cry or snuffle.

A casual ear, listening by his doorstep, might suppose the sounds coming from within are tears, but that is assuredly _not _the case. No, to anyone who asks, these are the sounds of ...pushups, and meditative breathing exercises.

———————-

Dawn comes quietly, damp and spongy and bleary. Ben rises from bed before the sun breaches the horizon, set on thinking some long thoughts and doing some writing while everyone sleeps. It's become a habit lately, sneaking off to be alone. He has come to crave it.

_Sneaking away from huts like sneaking away from Hutts, _ he smirks to himself, knowing his father would cuff him if he ever knew he said that. Then he kicks himself for missing his father.

The creaking of the cabin under his careful feet cuts the stillness the way Fizx banging pots at mealtime breaks the chatter of midday, stopping everyone in their tracks. When Fizx does it, it's also with a look of horror on people's faces that says_ dear gods, why. _ He cringes with each sound, half convinced that discovery is a grim inevitability.

He knows, on some level, that waking someone up will not steal the dawn. It will still exist and he can still write. But he wants this morning to himself. He does not want to share. He successfully extracts himself and heads down to the beach to ponder the vast ocean.

_Darkness, _ he finally writes, seated in his favorite spot as mist lazily floats around him.  
_A cold fire, a streak of ice  
A wave of water to bury me  
My future, my past,   
Take me to the bottom of the   
Deepest darkest   
Trench_

He sets down his pen.

He gazes out into the distance. The susurrus of waves lapping at the pebbles at irregular intervals, sometimes louder or softer, simultaneously scratches at his mind and soothe it.

_Light  
The bright  
Thin  
Brittle metal blast shield   
Between my mortal body  
And the chaos  
If I poke a hole  
Smash a fist through it   
Will I find a vacuum and be sucked out to space  
Or is it a cage, holding me in  
And I will finally be unblinded  
By the Light_

After a time of meaningful pondering and mostly satisfying poetry he heads back, stopping for a moment to rub his cloak in an opportune abandoned bird’s nest full of guano. He stuffs the flimsi into a pocket with one hand, holding the soiled cloak away from himself with the other and mentally bracing for _dealing with people. _

He drops the cloak by the twins' door with a faint smile.

———————-

Life Day, and Ben's party, finally arrive on the heels of a chilly storm that has everyone huddling to conserve body heat. At least two are also huddling lekku and arms and legs and—oh! there's a tongue—for warmth.

A recorded transmission comes in from Senator Organa's secretary wishing her son a happy birthday. It offers what he strongly suspects to be a generic greeting and gets his age wrong. Another follows that corrects the age and the date and offers apologies.

Luke gives a rousing speech about the Skywalker Legacy, how he personally helped save the galaxy from tyrannical horrors and how humility is the greatest virtue. He gives Ben a new mud-brown robe, a slightly muddier color than the last mud-brown robe which was really more of an umber when he thinks about it. Various small tokens exchange hands: carvings, foods, the occasional gag gift ("Here is a rock." "Why, thank you, Bleelo."), as well as the obligatory holiday insults, carefully crafted and delivered with optimum invective. Kari gives him an embroidered twine pen-cozy for keeping his calligraphy pens warm. He thinks, after this, that maybe she is a few transfer circuits short of a transpacitor but appreciates her fondness for him and makes a point of using the cozy religiously. He tells her frequently that his pens are very warm.

Luke sends him out on a journey of self discovery, as expected, during which he shivers a lot and scratches a lot of lines into the cave wall and writes a_ lot _of very emotional poetry centering around darkness. Because he has decided he is concerned with purity of method, this time he also writes _in_ the dark.

Huddled in the cold, he tries and fails to cage his anger at various people, mostly circling back to his parents. He thinks about vindictively starting a tally of the days since they spoke to him. Not since a recorded message, but a real, actual conversation. He used to try more, but there was never a good time for them; they always had a convincing reason and they were also wonderful at keeping him hoping. Now, he thinks, when he eventually leaves this place, he would like to make some grand gesture to show them: "See? Look, I succeeded without you." He would like, maybe, for it to hurt.

He pulls his scratchy cloak around him and sinks into the cold. He finds after some time that if he doesn't fight it, the cold and the harsh and the sharpness of winter begin to welcome him like a second skin. The embrace of a sort of death… fits him. This realization creeps in at first slow like a trickle of water, then suddenly all at once like waking to a flood.

The deeper implications of this trouble him as much as they set his soul alight. So on the last day he starts a campfire and looks at the flickering light on the wall of the cave while his poetry burns to ash.

———————-

_Duke and Lara retired from fighting evil monsters after the epic fight in the swamp. They got married in a small ceremony that no one cared about except Duke's sister, who was rich and therefore livid that it wasn't extravagant. But that was not their wish. They moved to a quiet and respectable house even though they had a lot of money because everyone loved them._

_Duke was a great farmer and so he farmed all the moisture Lara had dreamed of. He made her a beautiful little moisture garden right beside their cottage. It had a drip, and a puddle, and a little wooden thonking thing that thonked every minute or so when the dripping filled it enough to tip over. It drove him crazy but Lara loved it. She really liked getting all wet, so Duke splashed her playfully and she moaned, "Ohhh, Duke." _

Luke finishes his manuscript, teary eyed, breathing hard and blushing.

He cheerily announces to everyone at the morning meditation that he will begin nightly story time about Jedi legends and true stories about the Legend of Luke Skywalker for fun and to lighten the mood around camp.

Seeing the confusion on their faces, he explains. There are lessons, Luke tells them, in all the stories around them in the galaxy. Even in the ancient legends that, admittedly, center around things like the Three Headed Beast of Guhhh That Ate a Village. There are parables of how to live virtuous Jedi lives that everyone would do well to study. How to _not_ fall to the dark side, he adds pointedly. He mentally makes a note to leave out any sexy parts in the legends because he has a reputation to uphold.

"Ahh, story time for the children," nods Bleelo, understanding dawning on his features.

"I… not… quite," stutters Luke.

Ben nods to his uncle, tight-lipped.

When the master turns around, behind his hand Ben whispers to the others that he, too, will begin telling nightly stories in his cabin. Parables of how to not be a stuck-up di’kut lurdo. And maybe ghost stories and fun stories about how the dark side is totally great.

He doesn't mean it, exactly. But he also... does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Di’kut lurdo is Huttese and Ewokese and roughly translates to “disappointing jerk dummy.”


	11. Chapter Eleven

The temple, after so many months of construction and setbacks, finally reaches completion in the spring. Following the fanfare and celebration, the solemn dedication and the obligatory food fight in the mess hall to mark the joyous occasion, the entire thing lasts only two months before it burns down, falls over, and, one can assume, sinks into a swamp. No one stays long enough to find out.

It happens like this:

First, there is the quiet and surreptitious creak of a door. The breath of warmed spring air, perfumed with jasweed petals. Then the glow of a lightsaber piercing the peace of night. A yell, a snarl, the collision of one lightsaber against another, and then a crunching sound. A settling of rubble, followed by silence that stretches for several minutes.

Heavy, labored breathing.

A figure staggering out into the clearing, favoring one leg. A body not quite reunited with a soul, a not-quite-man who believes he may have just murdered, unable to identify a coherent thought or feeling.

He stumbles in an adrenaline-addled haze toward the temple. Maybe he wants to hide. He's not sure. He has no idea where he is going or why. He passes by a voice or two from the other huts, some murmurs and shuffling; these sounds reach his ears but not his awareness. He makes it to the door and pushes his way in.

He leans a heavy hand on a pillar and doubles over to vomit.

———————-

A thousand thoughts come crashing into his mind when the doors fling open behind him. He realizes his saber is in his hand and then sees that it's lit. He hears himself shouting at whoever it was to get _out, get OUT_ and sending a book crashing through a window. The person disappears. He looks around, alone once more, and then his unseeing glazed stare snags on the Statue of Serenity that Luke sculpted out of river clay. He remembers helping haul the clay to the workshop after he and Luke dug it from the riverbed. His eyes lock onto it, narrowing. Its beatific, self-satisfied expression sends a dagger of bitterness through his heart and he hurls himself at it, hacking it to pieces until the clay crumbles into river dust.

He doesn't stop after that. He should, he knows this, but he can't, transported by the mounting tide of rage that numbs his soul, venting his anguish. He destroys everything within reach. The stools and benches, the woven mats and window blinds, the inspirational quotation tapestries written in ancient mystery tongues that probably say "Eat Noodles At Onk's," he doesn't know, mandalas, the wall of seven-eyed and twisted metal pronged and glowing Jedi artifacts from across all quadrants of the Galaxy. He hurls them off the wall. Where his saber falls, sparks and flames spring to life and soon smoke wreaths him in a shadowed cloak.

He reaches a decision.

Nothing, at this point, is salvageable.

Not what Luke has done to him, not what he has done… to… to....

Not what Luke tried to build, not the Jedi Order, and not this temple. Not his family, who barely know him, who will never forgive him now if they learn.

No one will. This ends here for him.

He sets to lighting everything on fire.

———————-

Ben emerges from the temple like a specter, expression black, head bowed. Rukas confronts him.

Ben, braced for condemnation but finding confusion, raises his head.

"What are you doing!? _Solo! _ What are you doing, why aren't you putting the fire out?"

Ben falters and stands there dumbly, unable to form speech.

Everyone is awake and shouting. Kari and Bleelo hurry out to the clearing from their cabins and stare together in shock at the inferno, the library wing now utterly engulfed in flame. Inside it—the last remaining old books and scrolls, their recent transcriptions together with Ben's manuscripts, the culmination of the last five years of their work that has survived the previous incidents—everything is ash. Bleelo clutches his stomach.

"Sefinne! Svenn! Help me with the water buckets!" shouts Anila from somewhere in the haze.

"Where are the twins?" another voice yells.

"Solo!" Rukas prompts.

The pillars supporting the central temple atrium abruptly collapse, sending a plume of sparks and smoke skyward, washing everyone with a wave of heat.

"I swear if they did this I will eat them alive!"

"I won't wait for Ben to throw them off a cliff, I'll do it myself!"

"It was Ben!"

"What?"

"Where is Luke?" someone shouts.

"He's dead," Ben says.

Over the roar of the fire, shouting and movement halt. Heads jerk sharply to Ben.

"What did you say?"

"What?" Rukas demands.

Ben falters.

"Luke was in my cabin. I... killed... him," he replies.

"You… what? You? Wh-what?" Kari stutters. "Is he in there?" She looks to the temple.

"No. He came to my bed tonight. With his lightsaber. He meant to murder me in my sleep. But I stopped him," he says.

"What are you talking about? Ben!"

"He attacked me and I fought back! What more is there to say? If I hadn't, I'd be lying in there dead by now." His voice, shaky at first, gains composure as he speaks, his hand clenched. "I… the roof fell on him."

Disbelieving exclamations and murmurs scatter through the crowd.

"But why?"

"Luke would never! You're a liar!" yells Sefinne at the same time that Fizx growls, "You must have deserved it!"

Ben, falling into a defensive back stance as he begins to be caged by the crowd, shouts, "He would, and what I said is true! Everything here is an illusion, a lie! Luke _lied. _To all of us. If he tried to murder me, his own _nephew, _ do you think he'd spare you? Listen to me!"

"No!"

"He was threatened. I was stronger than him. The Jedi Order is a relic of the past; I see that clearly now. We're being entombed here. I was the first one to question that—"

"You're the Skywalker heir!" wails Fizx.

"—and the first to be killed for it!" Ben finishes, angry.

"How could you do this? Master Luke—" Fizx chokes up. "L-Luke would never—he must have known what you were planning! To destroy everything! You're turning into a Sith!"

"No! I want a future—"

"As a murderer! The son of Princess Leia and Han Solo, the greatest heroes of the New Republic, a _Skywalker! _Everyone, looking to you. Now we know what you really are! You're a piece of karking nerf dung!"

Ben, reeling, bellows, "What do you know about any of it?! So what, you think if I defend myself I'm evil? I don't measure up? You know _nothing!" _

Lim cuts in. "This isn't up to us, Fizx. We need to arrest him and let him stand trial properly on Hosnian. This is a matter for the proper authorities to judge, not us."

That sparks panic inside him as he backs up: The thought of facing his mother and a Senatorial committee has him twitching for his saber.

"Ek! Svenn! Help me arrest him!"

"There is more to the Force than Master Skywalker would teach us," shouts Ben. "All of you know it. He was keeping us from our potential. He would kill us to prevent his precious teachings from being sullied by the dark."

"That's Sith talk!"

"It isn't. But you've always hated me; why don't you just admit it?"

Fizx steps into Ben's space. He extends his hand, holding eye contact. Then, he yanks, _hard, _ on Ben's padawan braid, ripping more than half of it out. Ben staggers, yelling, and shoves Fizx, but a claw is locked fast on his fistful of hair and Ben screams. He kicks him in the stomach, finally dislodging him. The broad reptilian hurls the braid to the ground and spits. It sizzles slightly.

"This is for Master Luke!" Fizx snarls. With a battle cry he ignites his saber and rushes Ben.

As Ben's saber rises to meet Fizx's, Kari adds a third blade to the fray, shouting. Kari, who has no Force sensitivity and little combat skill, is not a match for either of them, but she throws her whole being into the effort with her training saber.

"Stop," she yells. "Stop!"

From near Ben's ruined hut, now no more than a pile of rubble, Sefinne screams. She looks furious, staring at Ben, dropping a ruined rafter in her hand. "You bastard, Solo. I don't care who you think you are. Master Luke didn’t deserve this. He didn’t deserve _you!_ I’m done here. I don't care about the law. Or the stupid authorities!" She ignites her weapon and launches herself at him. Rukas, whose loyalties have only ever lain with one person, sees her enter the fray and, without thinking, immediately joins her.

Ben is a blur of motion now, fighting three at once, saber moving too fast to follow. He calls urgently to the fire in his soul and it answers.

As he does, his movements begin to follow a more lethal pattern; he aims strikes for the head and chest rather than the nimble dodges and flourishes of the training forms. He uses his fists and shoulders and brawls as instinct overtakes him. He drinks in the darkness. He gives himself over to it as he never has done before.

Outside the hyperfocus of combat, the crowd is a milky haze to Ben, obscured by the smoke and the furious thunder of the collapsing temple.

Something hits his head. He doesn't take time to register it before blocking another strike from Sefinne.

Anila whirls toward him with her weapon now. His spirits wilt as he shifts his stance. He can take four on one, he thinks. Then he sees her block a blow meant for him and realizes she is defending him. He puffs a grateful breath before launching a volley of rapid attacks that drive the Twi'leks back. Someone screams behind him.

A thud.

Kari is on the ground. Bleelo shrieks her name, anguished.

Svenn roars, and the violet glow of his weapon floods to life, mingling with the smoke and the sparks.

Ben does not know who is friend or foe after that; all he knows is the dark pulse animating his limbs and cobwebbing his mind. He feels it extend to the others who fight him; they don't know how to command and channel it like he does, but they are drawing from the dark even so. Another combatant falls. Trissk...He was fighting for Ben. He doesn't know who struck the blow.

All he hears is screaming. Even the quiet ones, Ek and Lim, are yelling. Ben thinks they are still only trying to subdue and arrest him, but this has become a lethal fight. They're the only ones still drawing solely from the Light.

In the end, the struggle cannot end any other way, really.

Not when shafts of white hot plasma are whirling through the air at close range; the Force and the boosted reflexes it provides only go so far against incomplete training and the instant lethality of a weapon whose mere touch severs limbs.

By some miracle, Bleelo survives, despite being deeply outclassed. Maybe he wins by force of pure, blinding, vengeful rage. Ben takes down both Twi'leks. Is he aware of what he's doing? To his shame, yes.

Yes, he is.

Within minutes, or hours, seven are crumpled on the ground. One wounded, six dead: the two quiet ones, Ek and Lim, Fizx, Rukas and Sefinne, always together. And Kari.

The stillness when it's all done is jarring, a bit like the sudden rupture of the saber in the atrium.

The combatants look to one another warily as they each wonder: Is it over? Trissk groans from the ground and makes to roll with agonized effort into a propped-up sitting position against a small rock. Anila bends to his side. He is missing an ear and an arm; the wound is cauterized. There is nothing to be done but find him bacta.

A further moment passes as they reach the collective conclusion that, yes, no one is pressing this fight. Then fleeting relief gives way to numbing shock and nausea and a sort of thin, sideways disconnect, and Ben doesn't know where reality went or how to find it again.

He kneels next to Kari.

He checks her pulse, knowing he won't find it.

The faces watching him are painted with misery, the ebbing hardness of determination, and varying shades of disbelief. Bleelo's expression has drained entirely. Anila thinks she is falling into a vacuum: _How do we face one another now? Will I ever make an offhand comment about the weather again? Haha, haha. I am not in my right mind. _

The air, pungent with so many horrors, weighted with ash and the heaviness of what has just been done, stirs softly.

Svenn scuffs a rock under his boot.

A breeze from the direction of the ocean, an icy current of air, draws Ben's gaze toward the cliff.

"It's over," he says, rising, with his face turned to the sea. "Everything ends tonight. The old ways are dead, gone, with the last Skywalker. It's time to leave it."

Reenok stifles a sob.

Jeesul puts an arm around her and holds her close.

"We're all we have left. We're alone now," says Ben, turning back. "You didn't mean for any of this, but they're going to come for all of us. You know it."

He looks to Trissk, whose worry is evident on his face.

Bleelo, whose eyes have never left Kari, murmurs.

"What, Bleelo?" asks Anila.

"I said, he's right."

She inhales sharply.

"We're with you, Ben," he says finally, face hard, tearing his eyes from his fallen friend. Jeesul murmurs his agreement after a minute, as does Reenok.

Anila gets up, turns, and then pokes Fizx savagely with her foot, finally deciding on an emotion: anger. "This one. He didn't have to start this fight. He should never have gotten involved. Hothead. He got us into this fight… but we _finished _it." She glares at his unmoving form. "And those two. I expected stupidity from them. But nothing like this."

She whirls around, hefts up Trissk and stalks up the hill. "I'm finding a ship."

The rest watch the two of them go.

"They need to be buried," Svenn tells Ben after a time.

Ben doesn't answer for a long while. He sways a little on his feet, the only outward sign of his state, along with his trembling fingers.

"Ben?”

"Why?" He finally turns to Svenn.

"What do you mean, ‘why?’"

"I mean, all of this will catch fire and burn... Why bury them? Let the planet swallow this place and everything on it. They should have lived, but they're gone; let them burn and maybe their spirits will escape with the ashes into the sky, and heal the wounds Luke caused here."

Svenn gives him a long look, then casts his eyes down. He eventually nods.


	12. Chapter Twelve

The slim freighter, on loan from an acquaintance of Luke's, breaks atmosphere about the time dawn stretches over the horizon to the west, illuminating the innermost moons with a blood red light that shifts to a whiter gray as they ascend.

"Where to?" Anila asks the cabin.

They all know there is nowhere they can hide once they are discovered. And they will be; that's not a question. The reach of the law is long in the New Republic, but nothing is longer or more inescapable than the combined resources of Leia Organa and all of Han Solo's underground networks. No smuggler haven will shelter them. No place with credits will loan to them. They have a week until the scheduled comm with San Tekka, Ben figures, then another week before the emergency dual frequency beacon activates and someone from the outpost comes looking for them. And Trissk needs medical care sooner than that in any case.

Ben can think of only one place that will protect them after this, regardless of either outcome. His thoughts turn back to the voice in the forest, the one that said to come when he was ready.

He is not ready, he thinks. But now he is out of time.

He turns toward the metal bulkhead and leans his forehead into his elbow against its chilly surface, closing his eyes. The grit and soot sting, bringing tears as he calls out in his mind to the voice in the far reaches of space, beyond known space routes.

It answers him, _Come._

Drawing a steadying breath, he turns to the others. "I know a place," he says to Anila.

———————-

It's the acrid tang of burning that finally rouses Luke rather than the frenetic beeping and whistles of the astromech above him. The droid has managed to budge some of the timber by ramming it, falling over twice in the effort, and now rolls with frantic excitement to greet his master's newfound state of awareness. A staccato of trills and whoops assaults Luke's ears before he hushes the droid.

"Artoo, I can't—it's too much, I can't follow you that fast."

Artoo chirps urgently.

"Yes, I smell it, I'll get out of here as soon as I can, I just—oww—"

The reality of memory catches up sharply with Luke as confusion fades and a thick horror clenches in his chest. The smoke… The Force feels jumbled and churned. It's like the ocean after a tsunami, torn and roiling. The students—_what was Artoo saying about the students? A ship? _

He can't feel Ben in the Force; the familial bond between nephew and uncle feels snapped in two, leaving a wide vacuous hole where Ben should be. His padawan feels non-existent. Luke doesn't know what to make of that.

He thrusts his arm through the rubble. Artoo enthusiastically assists in any way possible. As it turns out, this help mostly consists of cheering him on and reminding him that there is a_ fire. _

He makes his way up with difficulty, wheezing painfully and coughing. When he sees the extent of the devastation and death, he can only stagger, and drop to his knees, and weep. He doesn't have it in him to ask Artoo what happened.

And Artoo, seeing him so broken, doesn't have the heart to tell him. It would only confirm what Luke fears, anyway.

In that moment Luke draws many conclusions.

When the first drops of rain hit him, he turns his face to the sky.


	13. Epilogue

Three years later, Ben is in the belly of a monster, a great metal thing that has both freed and trapped him.

He sails the stars now, pilots even, and writes poetry in his mind about skitterbugs sometimes while staring out at the starlines. He doesn't write it down, though.

He tries very hard to compose about the dark side, both to please his master and to numb his ever-present pain, but frequently finds that his words are about the light. Those poems, as desperately as he wants to divest himself of them, are the ones he holds in his soul and cannot recite to the ashen mask of his grandfather. He can't recite them to anybody. They increase the pain when he does it, really, and he knows it, but in the end that's useful too, isn't it?

He turns and stands, places his helmet on his head, and regards the door before he goes to _face people_.

_I work with a man who's named Hux,_ he thinks, absently gnawing his lip.  
_A general obsessed with deluxe  
Ships, and weapons, more too;  
When I stab him the crew  
Will all shrug and say simply, "Oh. Shucks." _

It's not all bad here.

It's mostly terrible.

But at least the dark side lets him think about that.

\---------

The hermit on the island, no longer a Skywalker, just a nobody, an interloper from a distant time and place, writes poetry about porgs.

He sits in the rain, face upturned, reveling in the torture of it while a small part of his mind still pounds at its walls to _escape the damp_. A trickle of water enters his shoe.

_Fierce, _ he writes, _she hovers by her chick.  
No wind or whisper harms him  
Her wings are strong,   
Warmth surrounds his feathers against  
The spray of cold water.  
He coos softly,  
Almost silent   
(More like to a droid who beeps  
Contentedly at a recharge station   
Than even a chirp)  
Someday, he will make a mighty, thunderous call  
And he will caw with the others as  
They take flight through the stars_

He pauses. This is too close to home. He bends to write one line more.

_Then, she pushes him off a cliff_.

_There, _he thinks. _That is a fitting end._

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is complete and I intend to post daily.
> 
> HUGE THANK YOU and HUGS and MANY GOOD THINGS to my betas, [situation_normal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/situation_normal), [HarpiaHarpyja](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarpiaHarpyja), and [TazWren](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TazWren) whose careful edits and encouragements have kept me going and have been deeply appreciated. If you notice textual problems, I can pretty much guarantee you they tried to stop me but I blazed merrily ahead, heedless to their warnings as I plunged off the cliff into the misty ethers. I acknowledge my failings, even as I flail to my inevitable grammatical demise.


End file.
